Optical activity and Alfred Werner's coordination chemistry.

It is widely accepted, that Pasteur's seminal discovery of the opposite optical activity of ammonium sodium tartrate enantiomorphs in solution gave the spark to organic stereochemistry and led to the development of the tetrahedron model by van't Hoff and Le Bel. The proof that chirality is inherently connected to octahedral coordination chemistry fostered greatly Werner's spatial views of metal complexes and his coordination theory. The actual proof of principle was established via separation of diastereomeric camphor sulfonate salts of racemic metal complexes.